1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to methods and systems for enabling internet advertising and, more particularly, to providing novel mechanism for using web browser for display of advertisements to users.
2. Description of the Related Art
Internet advertising is very effective because of the possibility for targeting the advertising materials based on user's demographics as well as intentions/interests/preferences, which can be inferred from the user's online activity history and because more and more people prefer to engage in shopping activity via the Internet. In the recent years there have been devised numerous methods for effectively targeting the advertisements in order to achieve the greatest return on the advertising dollars spent.
On the other hand, the way advertising materials are presented to the Internet user has not changed. Most ads are provided to the user in a form of banner ads, which are usually located on the top of the web page viewed by the user, or as ads that can be placed on web browser toolbar(s). However, it is desirable that the user is also provided with promotional information related to websites that appear, for example, in user's browser history. For instance, if the user was previously looking at buying a pair of shoes at www.shoes.com and decided against making the purchase, seeing that www.shoes.com has store-wise sale and the user can get the same shoes at a substantial discount may change the user's purchasing decision and the user may go forward with the purchase, making revenue for the advertiser.
Therefore, there is a need for systems and methods that provide additional advertising or promotional materials to the user using an internet browser.